Auburn Correctional Facility in Cayuga County is the oldest prison in New York State. (Credit: Zach Jaworski)
Bryon Russ, 46, who spent more than two decades in New York state prisons for robbery and assault, said a lot comes to mind when he thinks of his time inside. But one thing sticks out: his time in solitary confinement.
“The first thing they do when you get to the box is strip you naked,” he said. “Then they tell you to bend over, squat, and they give you a one-piece suit that barely fits.”
His cell, Russ said, was approximately six by eight feet, with concrete walls, a metal bed frame and a toilet-sink combo. There was almost no human interaction.
Now Russ, who has been free since 2023, is concerned that the state corrections department’s recent recommendations to loosen solitary-confinement law is going to hurt people like him — especially when the emotional baggage of solitary affects their ability to get and retain jobs.
“People get out of there and they find it hard to get back in society,” Russ said, who now owns a box truck for his own shipping business. “Especially if you didn’t ever have an opportunity to get involved in the [vocational] programming.”
The recommendations that concern Russ would amend the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement, or HALT, act which passed in 2021 under then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo. That law was designed to make state prisons compliant with international standards through limiting stays in solitary confinement to 15 days and making it harder for officers to use it for disciplinary purposes.
The new recommendations, however, include broadening the list of behaviors that can result in solitary confinement, which would include sexual harassment, lewd conduct, throwing bodily fluids at officers, extortion, riot and escape attempts — all of which were listed pre-HALT.
They also propose replacing out-of-cell time during solitary confinement with special behavioral classes, and making it easier for correctional staff to use solitary to defuse tense or violent situations.
Corrections Commissioner Daniel Martuscello said in a news release that the suggested changes were written “in a way that will ultimately lead to better outcomes and safer facilities.”
His department created the committee as a concession to end last year’s statewide correction officers strike, which started in part because of officers’ concerns over spiking violence they felt could be curbed by using solitary confinement more often.
Most of the officers on strike returned in early March after a deal with the state. Still, nearly 3,000 officers resigned and an additional 2,000 officers were fired from a workforce of 22,000, after the month-long strike that locked down prisons and created a lasting staffing shortage.
A 2021 research paper lead-authored by Bruce Western, a Columbia University sociology professor, found that being held in solitary is associated with an increased risk of psychological distress — especially common were former inmates choosing to withdraw from social settings. And a 2020 Cornell study conducted in Denmark, a country with robust prison statistics, found that inmates placed in solitary have higher unemployment and are more likely to return to prison.
Michelle Bonet, 52, believes those studies are accurate. She spent 71 days in solitary at Albion, a women’s prison near Rochester, after she failed a drug test that she believes was faulty and is still challenging in court.
Bonet, who now lives in Westchester and is studying to become a lawyer, said that solitary contributed to her anxiety disorder. She said it “absolutely” affected her ability to find work after she got out because “those feelings don’t go away.”
“They don’t have a home, they can’t get a job, they can’t get proper mental health care,” said Bonet, who now runs a Facebook group for formerly incarcerated individuals and families.
“Who’s really sitting there [on release] going, ‘Well, primarily before I do anything else, I need to sit down for a few hours a week with a psychiatrist and figure out how [solitary] f — ed me up,” Bonet said.
Steuben Vega works for the Osborne Association, a re-entry-focused non-profit based in New York, where he helps former prisoners find work.
“What works for one person is not always going to work for the next,” Vega said. Solitary “without programming is not going to help improve the situation.”
He said he has known several people who spent time in solitary with tendencies to self-isolate, which makes it difficult for them to transition into any job, especially ones with a team-oriented workflow.
To be implemented, the committee’s recommendations will need to be passed by the state legislature, which will convene again in January.
One supporter is Patrick Gallivan, a state senator representing Buffalo’s southern suburbs. He is urging his GOP colleagues — who make up a minority of the body — to vote for the recommendations that he called in a news release “a good first step.”
Assemblyman David DiPietro, a Republican representing a suburb of Buffalo, gives the recommendations “zero chance” of passing. “I highly doubt the Democrats will budge,” he said.
The Democratic majority is indeed skeptical. Julia Salazar, who chairs the Senate Committee on Crime Victims, Crime and Correction, said she opposes the changes and believes her colleagues will agree.
“New York will never return to the practice of torturing people through the use of solitary confinement,” Salazar said in a statement to Columbia News Service.
The New York Civil Liberties Union, a non-profit civil rights watchdog, argued that the changes could inflict “immense harm” on the prison population. The department “is not a lawmaker, and the agency cannot just defy a law it doesn’t like,” the group wrote in a statement.
The Legal Aid Society, a New York-based public defender organization, echoed the NYCLU’s sentiments, saying in a news release that it would give corrections officers “sweeping new discretion,” to implement solitary as punishment.
“The Legislature passed HALT precisely because solitary is dangerous,” the group said. “It inflicts lasting mental and physical harm, fuels violence, and makes prisons less safe.”
About the author(s)
Zach Jaworski is a journalist based in New York City covering local governments, carceral issues, and New York State politics.